t by frequenting
the public houses, and with dramatic gestures singing the more popular
concert-hall songs. One of the most determined and head-strong young
ladies of the establishment was not privileged to be present at the
morning service, being, in fact, in bed, where she was detained with the
hope that amid the silence and solitude of the empty chamber she might
be brought to see in its true light the heinousness of the offence of
wilfully depositing her boots in a pail of water.

Conviction for offences against the law is by no means a general
characteristic of the girls. For the most part, destitution has been the
simple ground on which they have obtained admission to the institution.

The girls being seated on the front benches to the right of the
harmonium, the tramp of many feet was heard, and there entered by the
opposite side of the church some sixty boys in corduroys, short jackets,
and clean collars. They took up a position on the left of the harmonium,
and, with one consent, gravely folded their arms. Their private history
is, in its general features, much the same as that of the girls. All
are sent hither by order of the police-court magistrate, but
many have not committed any crime save the unpardonable one of being
absolutely and hopelessly homeless. It is not difficult, stating the
broad rule, to pick out from the boys those who have been convicted of
crime. As compared with the rest they are generally brighter looking,
and gifted with a stronger physique.

The distinction was strongly marked by the conjunction of two boys who
sat together on the front form. One who had stolen nothing less than a
coalscuttle, observed projecting from an ironmonger's shop in Drury
Lane, was a sturdy, ruddy-cheeked little man, who folded his arms in a
composed manner, and listened with an inquiring interest to the words
poured forth over his head from the platform. The boy next to him, a
pale-faced, inert lad, who stared straight before him with lack-lustre
eyes, had the saddest of all boys' histories. He was born in a casual
ward, his father died in a casual ward, and his mother nightly haunts
the streets of London in pursuance of an elaborately devised plan, by
which she is able so to time her visits to the various casual wards as
never to be turned away from any on the ground that she had slept there
too recently.

The foreground of the Ragged Church was bright enough, for whilst there
is youth there is hope, and